26" ride on a roadie ride?

[xtaffa]

Hi all,

Thinking of doing this with my cousin this year:

https://www.opencycling.com/coast-to-coast-in-a-day/
He'll be in a modern titanium road thing, and any of the likely candidates joining us have road machines with 700c hoops. We'll be roughly same fitness/speed on average over that course. Aim is survival and chat, not setting personal bests.

I fancy sticking some tanwall roadish tyres on my 92 Eldridge grade and doing it on that. Couple of q's for those who do decent distances:

1) Will the smaller wheels over that distance on road mean I will be continually dropping away without major extra effort?

2) Eldridge is flat bar, is it worth faffing with adding drops for hand positions etc? Was thinking just to stick some ski bar ends on for this.

If it's unlikely to work/be pleasant, I'll just borrow a road bike from somewhere, but would love to give the Eldridge a proper long run out!

Thoughts appreciated!

 

[sinnerman]

Weight and gear ratios will have the largest effect imho. Id borrow a road bike if it were me.

 

[jimo746]

1) maybe.

2) yes I'd stick some clip on aero bars on or something.

If you're riding with other road bikes then like Sinnerman said, I'd be looking at borrowing a road bike. Fitness etc being equal you'd be slower than the rest /have to work harder to keep up, which might not end up being much fun at all.

 

[Dr Dremel]

I did once ride with a friend who is mainly a roadie. My bike had Ritchey Tomslicks 1.25, otherwise full MTB spec. First 25km was ok, then I suffered. Lessons: Don´t do this with folks who commute by bike every day. Don´t be too pride to hide in the slipstream. Don´t do it anyway, cause riding on the streets with cars sucks

 

[legrandefromage]

Modern bigger volume tyres will help up the rotational diameter of your 26 wheels, then loads of air to make everything feel faster

Bar-ends will help out with hand positions

I did a lot of furlough road miles on this last summer, road ratio cassette and 50psi, 46t chainring currently

 

[mk one]

If your just doing it for the experience and at a leisurely pace then i see no issues, the Marin being already set up for you for off road, adding slicks will make the bike feel easier anyway.

 

[legrandefromage]

The tyres I was using were from a PlanetX sale and are no longer around - they are really fast rolling

These are big buggers!

https://www.bikester.co.uk/maxxis-d...i--7IAcBOEeL8X-FHugvrbLE44REW1cBoC1aYQAvD_BwE

 

[legrandefromage]

Did 60 miles on this about 10 years ago

It was not fun!

 

[Skynet]

Depends on your fitness, it's certainly going to be harder work (not exactly a shock). Gearing is not such a big deal if you can spin unless they're pushing it. But if they are then you're not going to keep up anyway unless you're a level above them. You certainly don't need to faff around with anything like aero bars!

Bear in mind there's a lot of stretching the truth/flat out lying on the internet about the speed roadies go. If you believe people no-one averages less than 20, the reality is more like 15 according to strava end of year reports. Of course some do but it's rare. But even at 20 you won't run out of gears very often if at all (perhaps with a 1x with tiny chainring).

 

[brocklanders023]

Lad at work was a huge roadie and reckoned wheel size made little difference. He was a good 6'4" and often came to work on a titanium 26" wheel road bike. He had 700c bikes too.

The biggest issue will be keeping up with the roadies, so if you plan to go at your own pace you'll be fine.

I've chopped and changed my bikes since covid hit as my mate bought a gravel bike when off work. I already had a carbon road bike but he was exploring BW's, canal paths, etc so I built up a 93 Clockwork to use when out with him. It was the same as you suggest, flat bar, slick tyres and bar ends. I then got a gravel bike on c2w so rode that plenty. Wasn't using the road bike so sold that then recently bought a modern, rigid XC bike.

My conclusions are that the road bike was a fair old bit quicker on road and as it was lighter, it was easier to put more miles in. To put it simply you could go faster for longer and changes in gradient made much less difference. Next on road comes the gravel bike although the retro and modern MTB's are/were not much slower with the right tyres. The one thing I did notice though was that drop bars are more comfy the further on road you go but not on gentle off road.

All that's a long winded way of saying if you want to keep up with road bikes, get one but your Eldridge will be perfectly fine if it's set up properly and you are not in a rush. Oh, and only riding on roads is boring.